Bull. Soc. Bot. Fr. 66: 301 (1920).- Type: Wood 5925, South Africa, Natal (holo- LY, iso- K).
Perotis patens var. parvispicula Robyns & Tournay, Bull. Jard. Bot. Ëtat 25: 241 (1955).
Regional litterature: FWTA: 411, fig 436 (1972); FTEA: 216 (1974); Ghana grasses: 212, fig. 72 (1977); Gram. Togo: 291 (1983); Gram. Cameroun: 162, fig. 33 (1992); Poac. CI: 216, fig. (1995); Fl. Ethiopia & Eritrea 7: 182, fig (1995); Fl. Zambesiaca 10,2: 250 (1999); Fl. Bénin: 233, fig. (2006) ; Fl. Guinée: 473 (2009); Pl. Burkina Faso: 106 (2012); Fl. Chad (2013); Pl. Sudan & S Sudan: 143 (2015).
Description:
* Loosely tufted annual or short-lived perennial with geniculate culms branching from a prostate base up to 0.75 m. Culms slender, branched, often geniculate at the base. Leaves short, broad, 1-7 cm long and 3-12 mm wide, flat and glabrous, with margins fringed with bristles; base rounded, clasping the culm; ligule a narrow membrane; sheath glabrous, with some long hairs near the tip. Roots fine and wiry.
* Inflorescence long yellowish to purple ‘bottle-brush’ racemes of densely crowded solitary spikelets, 5-30 cm long, long-excerted from the uppermost sheath.
* Spikelets 1.7-2.7 mm long with abruptly rounded base of callus. Glumes scaberulose to minutely hispidulous; mid nerve of glumes prolongued into fine straight awns of 9-17 mm long. Lemma acute, 1-nerved, 1.5 mm long, muticous; palea very small. Caryopsis terete, 1.2-1.4 mm long.
Distribution West Africa: Guinea, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroon, CAR, Chad, South Sudan.
Distribution world-wide: Ethiopia, Uganda, DRC, Gabon and C, NE, E and southern Africa.